Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Snouts in the Trough

The pigs are wallowing in muck again, this time it's Tory MP Derek Conway. Is stupidity the most important qualification for being an MP in modern Britain? Apparently the answer is yes, and it was perhaps a superfluous question. Don't forget that nice Mr Osborne, Tory prat for Tatton, is also being investigated by the authorities over £500,000 donated to help him run his office, some bloody office that must be!

Now I am not a one to slag off MPs, or others elected to public office, who employ family members to work for them. If a wife, or another relative, is qualified to do a job on your behalf then you would be a fool not to employ her. You only have to consider the backstabbing and plotting that seems to motivate too many in politics to conclude that employing a politico carries a certain risk. Now, unless your marriage is rocky in the first place, or your family is the kind that leaves horses heads in rivals' beds or shoots people when they are eating spaghetti, then employing a family member is a much safer bet.

However, when a politician employs a son who is doing a full-time degree course nearly 300 miles from his constituency, and there is no record of him lifting a finger on behalf of his 'employer', then that stinks and is a clear misuse of public funds. A 10 day suspension from parliament is no punishment whatsoever, a parliamentary by-election should be on the horizon.

If anybody still thinks that life would be better under the Tories then think again.

Or is all this sleaze designed to justify taxpayer funding of political parties?